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Creativity => Game Design & Demos => Topic started by: Cysma on July 23, 2010, 01:31:44 am

Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Cysma on July 23, 2010, 01:31:44 am
I'm planning my next RPG Maker VX project and I was wondering if the game could generate random dungeons each playthrough (like a roguelike) but also include treasure chests with loot selected from a table as well as nonrandom parts of a dungeon for story-related reasons.

Also, I was thinking that instead of having maps for all the towns, going to a town on the world map would open up a menu that would let the player access the inn, shops, and quest points immediately instead of having to wander through town to get there. Does this sound like a good idea from a design standpoint? My main reason for this is because I can never make my town maps look right, so why bother?
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vellfire on July 23, 2010, 01:55:29 am
Randomly generated dungeons + no towns whatsoever = what is even left to be designed at this point

To answer your question my fair Cysma, a game could.  But do you think a game should?  And on top of that, you've given us no reason to believe you're capable of programming any of this so really the only answer anyone can give you is "yes this is possible".
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Cysma on July 23, 2010, 02:28:43 am
I'm more about the database, filling out all the character/monster/item/skill information and making it all balanced.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: EvilDemonCreature on July 23, 2010, 03:25:21 am
Hey, that's what it's all about man.

Don't sweat the small stuff.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vanit on July 23, 2010, 04:49:55 am
For one, I think thats a contradiction in design. Procedurally generated dungeons are usually pretty tedious, and then you want to take out the "tedium of towns" by reducing it to a menu? To me it sounds like a recipe for boredom and unfun. Additionally I think its questionable why you want to give yourself as less design work as possible (even though thats all you can do), while outsourcing all the design work to the programmer through incredibly complicated custom systems, that serve no purpose beyond making up for your own inadequacy. Explain to me again where this team is going to come from?
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Ragnar on July 23, 2010, 04:50:22 am
so I've gathered that you guys like World of Warcraft and Roguelike stuff which one is basically GRINDING without any of the fun stuff inbetween from what I've gathered, and roguelike is just DUNGEONS that nobody designed an algorithm did it I don't see how this ends up in FUNFACTOR nobody put the effort into designing it or anything  conclusion you guys must hate yourselves

even if a dungeon generator could make 1000x better dungeons than a human it seems like most dungeons in well known/loved rpgs aren't even anything special like a couple of hallways and that's it everybody remembers the ghost train from FF6 and it's basically GO LEFT (or go right I forget)
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Darken_ on July 23, 2010, 04:56:52 am
idk guys, play games like Etrian Oydessy and you'll see what the TC is probably getting at. The real "design" focus is probably the battles in which you cannot cookie cutter your way through. I am not a roguelike fan and probably never will be. But I can see why people love that stuff.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vellfire on July 23, 2010, 11:04:09 am
even if a dungeon generator could make 1000x better dungeons than a human it seems like most dungeons in well known/loved rpgs aren't even anything special like a couple of hallways and that's it everybody remembers the ghost train from FF6 and it's basically GO LEFT (or go right I forget)

tbh i absolutely hate dungeons and would much rather play games without any.  to me dungeons were something you had to suffer through, not something you enjoyed.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vanit on July 23, 2010, 11:28:32 am
I'm not sure what content RPGs would have without dungeons (where dungeons are a combat-oriented zone, I don't explicitly mean a cave or prison scenario).
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vellfire on July 23, 2010, 12:32:52 pm
I'm not sure what content RPGs would have without dungeons (where dungeons are a combat-oriented zone, I don't explicitly mean a cave or prison scenario).

I think this is why I don't like RPGs as a rule.  I hate dungeons and think they're a waste of time and most RPGs are 90% dungeons.  I think they're horribly unfun.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vanit on July 23, 2010, 01:00:15 pm
I've only found they're unfun if a) the battle system is horribly boring, b) they make you solve puzzles while encounters are enabled.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vellfire on July 23, 2010, 01:04:55 pm
I've only found they're unfun if a) the battle system is horribly boring, b) they make you solve puzzles while encounters are enabled.
sounds like rpgs to me
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vanit on July 23, 2010, 01:45:06 pm
Just the bad ones! I think FFXIII did an excellent job of a non-boring, unintrusive battle system, and since battles weren't random it wasn't frustrating during puzzles. Unfortunately it fell behind a bit due to linear level design (aside from a couple of locations), but I'd argue it succeeds where most RPGs fail.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Rajew on July 23, 2010, 04:49:19 pm
Quote
I think FFXIII [...] succeeds where most RPGs fail.
You can not unsay this.

also, roguelikes are fun because it's almost unlimited content that does require some thinking to beat because most of the time it's completely unfair (because the algorithms feed on human suffering). It's like, "I'm on level 5 of the dungeon, got polymorphed into a horse, and am fighting a great dragon...what can I do to survive?" and then if you actually do survive you felt like you just did something incredible. It's all about the strategy and challenge, man.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Mince Wobley on July 23, 2010, 07:33:10 pm
I'm not sure how the dungeon generation part would work! If you don't have the intelligence to make a dungeon generation algorithm in rpg maker vx you could always pre-make them and randomly choose which one the player has to go through.

I like this kind of thing because it adds replayability. It is a good idea from a game design view point. The problem is making it work!
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vellfire on July 23, 2010, 07:44:55 pm
Cysma has made it very clear he doesn't know how to program so he has no problem with making it work (other than finding someone to do it for him).
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Rajew on July 23, 2010, 08:02:58 pm
http://gamingw.net/forums/index.php?topic=79405.msg1529443 here, translate this to whatever mooncode rpgmaker vx uses (it's supported by ruby so it has actual code involved right?)

Hm, I should probably have asked tomato if it was cool to link that
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vanit on July 23, 2010, 09:43:18 pm
Thanks Rajew. Now we need to spend 10 threads in 5 different sections of the forums helping Cysma paste it into RMVX.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Vellfire on July 24, 2010, 01:33:22 am
i just realized what cysma reminds me of


most specifically the part where the dad goes "NOBODY HELP HIM"
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Corfaisus on July 24, 2010, 03:00:02 am
One thing that I'm thinking about is randomizing dungeons in a grid-like system, where in teleport events it chooses random switches to turn on that, using a conditional branch, will change where a teleport is linked. Using the same method of randomizing teleports, treasure can also be put in chests and in breakable objects like crates and barrels. I'm thinking more of a .hack sort of dungeon with this. I should try this out in Rm2k3 to see how it works.

Sure, something like this will require a grand number of rooms to make each run seem at least slightly different than the last, but it should be incredibly easy to implement if this is the type of game you're looking for.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Rajew on July 24, 2010, 03:06:44 am
rm2k3 comes with a dungeon randomizing feature.... if you want specific events I suppose there should be a way to set events that automatically place themselves in valid spots on map creation
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Corfaisus on July 24, 2010, 03:22:31 am
rm2k3 comes with a dungeon randomizing feature.... if you want specific events I suppose there should be a way to set events that automatically place themselves in valid spots on map creation

Of course it does, but that's not what this discussion is about.
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Ragnar on July 24, 2010, 06:04:20 am
i just realized what cysma reminds me of


most specifically the part where the dad goes "NOBODY HELP HIM"

let's have a topic where we find every mr.show clip on youtube and try to relate something to each one

I remember ARCANA for SNES it had not random dungeons but the usual first-person kind that looks like identical hallways and there was at least some auto-map feature so you don't get lost (lack of distinguishable landmarks is a gameplay feature) but the towns were just 2 or 3 still pictures and the world map was really just an animation of you walking on it I felt so pissed like thanks for faking like you had several gameplay features you didn't really have
Title: Random/Procedurally Generated Dungeons
Post by: Biggles on July 24, 2010, 12:03:11 pm
so I've gathered that you guys like World of Warcraft and Roguelike stuff which one is basically GRINDING without any of the fun stuff inbetween from what I've gathered, and roguelike is just DUNGEONS that nobody designed an algorithm did it I don't see how this ends up in FUNFACTOR nobody put the effort into designing it or anything  conclusion you guys must hate yourselves

even if a dungeon generator could make 1000x better dungeons than a human it seems like most dungeons in well known/loved rpgs aren't even anything special like a couple of hallways and that's it everybody remembers the ghost train from FF6 and it's basically GO LEFT (or go right I forget)
roguelikes being fun has nothing to do with the dungeon design except in Spelunky and that's because the algorithm is more structured / better. maybe i'm reading your post wrong. ~psopsting intoxifcated~